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Comment by cletus | Hacker News Reader

Here in Australia, one of the major supermarket chains (Coles) made a statement about this. They said their biggest week of the year is the Christmas week. They spend 6 months preparing for this. Each of the last 3 weeks has essentially been a Christmas shopping week. That's the scale of the problem.

We have enough food and supplies. We have the distribution to get it to stores. We have the capability to sell it in store. The only scarcity we have is because of the hoarders. That hoarding and resulting scarcity is creating more hoarders.

It's textbook illusion of scarcity.

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The secondary hoarders-- those who hoard because others have hoarded-- are in some ways behaving rationally too: Try to buy your normal rate of toilet paper and find it gone; then you search and search; when you finally find some you don't know when you might do so again, so you need to buy extra.

It doesn't seem like a problem that will be solved until, gradually, everyone has plenty and most stores are stocked. That seems to be how things abated in 1973, over a few months.

The rational way to behave is to not live roll to roll, so to speak. A well stocked pantry won't have trouble in a scare because... well it will have stock.

Few things suck so much time away as having to go out for X because you've run out.

In other news I've got fourteen pounds of beans if anybody wants any.

> The rational way to behave is to not live roll to roll, so to speak. A well stocked pantry won't have trouble in a scare because... well it will have stock.

Just-in-time manufacturing succeeded because supply chains became reliable enough that factories didn't need their own stockpiles. If you're out in the country and you have a big pantry then sure, stock up, but those of us living in the city may not have space. And even if you do have space, if everyone realises they have no stock and decides to buy up a month's supply, that has pretty much the same practical impact as hoarding.

"Hoarding" is just a smear word on building an emergency buffer just-in-time. Or, JIT supply chains extend all the way to end-consumer, so let's not act surprised that a spike in demand due to perceived risk increase breaks everything up the chain. This should've been conpensated for in the chain.

no, "hoarding" in this sense isn't a smear word on a buffer, it's buying 4/5/6x your normal buffer, to the point that people who haven't hoarded are now starting to be left without. I have a 48sqm apartment with 2 adults and a dog. we only _just_ have enough space for 3 weeks worth of all supplies. we're now running low on the things that people started panic buying a month ago, because of hoarding, not because of buffering.

> I have a 48sqm apartment with 2 adults and a dog. we only _just_ have enough space for 3 weeks worth of all supplies

I have a 44sqm apartment with 2 adults, an infant and a cat, and we've managed to fit a month's worth of supplies in a single wardrobe. I don't think space is a problem (weight is, OTOH).

Suddenly stocking to up to 6 months of everything? That's hoarding. Building a month's worth? That's a minimum if you want to stay safe in case you and your family get quarantined, and your normal buffer should be around that anyway, regardless of the pandemic.

If everyone who didn't have a stash before is suddenly stocking up for a months supply of everything, you get shortages. The right way to build up your supplies is slowly over time.

Indeed FEMA is now asking that folks only buy a weeks worth of groceries: https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/03/23/coronavirus-new-guide...

Over here in Germany the recommendation has always been to have supplies for 10-14 days at home. Seems like a more reasonable number than a months worth - especially for city dwellers.

That's indeed the right solution. But it needs to be enforced by the stores - as many do now, with per-customer purchase limits.

> the recommendation has always been to have supplies for 10-14 days at home. Seems like a more reasonable number than a months worth - especially for city dwellers.

That's a nice recommendation for a calm time, but a bit short for the pandemic. If you get quarantined, you need to stay put for 14-21 days. Add a bit of padding to account for undersupplied stores (and to add a margin for error), and you arrive at 1 month's worth.

We've seen this coming since at least early February. That's exactly when I started stocking up, buying ~2x amounts of non-perishables (e.g. 2 packages of pasta) instead of waiting for the impending hoarder shitstorm at the very last minute. I forget where I read this recommendation (WHO?), but it has definitely paid off, I haven't been to the store in almost 2 weeks :)

That assumes you have absolutely zero access to groceries for those 14-21 days. But there are still delivery services and neighbors. In Germany, city governments have actually delivered food to those quarantined.

I'd say that's a safe assumption to make. On top of that, even contactless delivery by via service or neighbour has nonzero risk of communicating the disease (in either direction), so it's worth minimizing the need for it.

Interesting. Here in Norway the recommendation has been to keep supplies for 3 days, including water, power supplies (battery banks), a radio with full batteries, heating and cooking possibilities and so on.

I agree with you. People have been hating so much on hoarders, while not acknowledging that the real problem is that people are way too reliant on a just-in-time supply chain. It's really not that difficult, expensive, or space-consuming to have a buffer of at least one month for scenarios like this. Yet, most people don't build up this buffer over time, out of laziness, and then they go around blaming others for the shortages during a crisis (or they go panic-hoarding themselves).

I used to go to work every weekday, and eat 2 meals there. Now I'm at home 24/7, so I'm already eating 5x the amount (before this, I would barely eat at home). Also, my girlfriend is here with me. I used to have a many months' worth of stock in the pantry, but now it turns out that it's just enough for two weeks.

Having a buffer is fine, but only starting to build up your buffer when everybody else does so as well is not. Everyone could've kept a month's supply of toilet paper on hand already. We've had an emergency supply of food and water (should last about a week?) for a couple of months now. I mean a few years ago we had months of drought, the tap never stopped but in some areas pressure was reduced, so it can happen to anyone.

My complaint is that I see people screaming "hoardres" where what really happens is someone buying an extra day's or two worth of supplies, and/or are buying for themselves and the extended family. Maybe things have changed now, but around me, most ruckus about hoarding was made by people who thought COVID-19 is just a flu and were inconvenienced by queues. People who couldn't understand that you need a buffer.

perhaps correctly a smear word, since you should have built your buffer up ahead of time?

Well, if the Lean methodology is so great for the entire supply chain, why it suddenly shouldn't be applied to the last link - the consumer? Building up a buffer is against just-in-time principle :P.

(The truth is, JIT supply chains simply aren't designed to survive events like a global pandemic. They're control systems overtuned to extract the last bits of efficiency from trade, and fall into bad oscillations when disruptions happen. As we can see today.)

> In other news I've got fourteen pounds of beans if anybody wants any.

Let your neighbors know, and be sure to tell them that there is no condition to wanting to eat them. Many people are going to go more hungry in the coming weeks or months, and helping those around us is one of the best ways to apply surplus.

the rational way to live is to live in a big enough domicile that you can have reliably stocked up with 3 weeks of what you need of any item at all times.

but maybe our world is not structured for maximal rationality.

Personally I think 640 sheets is enough for anyone, however, rationality isn't rational at the moment.

Since The Thing is exponential there is a worst-case-scenario that everyone on the entire planet will have it by the middle of May, if not before.

So correctly assuming that you are the last person to get it, then you will need eight rolls of bathroom tissue. This will see you through to the calamity and through two weeks of self isolation to either recover or die.

If living in a house of two adults with two point two children, one dog and two cats, then you are going to need four of those nine roll packs to see The Thing through.

This has some contingency for problems of localised flooding in your bathroom, a stomach bug or children that are secretly selling your supplies.

Plus this allows for extra supplies in case vulnerable locked-down Baby Boomers run out in your neighbourhood and need the folding stuff.

Given that the hoarding mentality is growing at an exponential rate and that every tree on the planet could be cut down for bathroom tissue in a month's time, the people buying dozens of rolls are arguably behaving in a rational manner.

> A well stocked pantry

Most ordinary people don’t have the luxury of a house with a pantry. And many people can only afford what they need each week so can’t stock up even if they had somewhere to store it.

There simply would’ve been no place to put bulk toilet paper in my 600/700 sq foot one bedroom in Seattle. Lots of people live in even smaller spaces.

I’ve lived this small and you get clever. I put things in storage under my bed, in my bookshelf, and in boxes in my closet. Worst case, I would just stack them in the open or on counters, behind the sink, and on window ledges

Whether or not you have a purpose built pantry is mostly just a reflection of the age of the building you live in.

A lot of bottom dollar apartments wind up having unintentional pantries because they wind up dividing a floor of an existing building in such a way that you wind up with a closet in the kitchen.

"Pantry" being a metaphor for whatever you have stored away, not a physical room. Regardless of your income unless it is extremely low or you are unemployed, whether or not you live paycheck to paycheck is a function of your decisions, not of your income. You will, in fact, have a considerably larger amount of money to spend, if you don't waste it on small volume frequent purchases.

I also think there are now a couple of new factors affecting it. With people staying at home, the demand of toilet paper has shifted to the home more. People might be limiting their trips to the shop and are bulk buying more. But I agree the hoarding is still creating a shortage of toilet paper (and pasta, meat etc). It will be good when people have enough and we see things stocked on the shelves like normal. Although with potential businesses closing or enforced self isolation, I can't see the shelves looking normal for a while. Been a run on bottle shops, Bunnings etc as well.

It's been interesting to see what gets sold out, there is still plenty of canned tuna etc, but no lemon juice (but there is lime juice). Didn't realise people used lemon juice so much.

> With people staying at home, the demand of toilet paper has shifted to the home more.

This. TP consumption is unchanged per day. But the proportion of consumed TP that is consumed at retail must be up 30-50%. Nearly nobody is using their work/school/restaurant's TP that comes in giant rolls or in a cardboard box without a UPC code.

Same for tomato sauce: Most people don't want the 10# cans that food-service used to buy. Or the barrels that a pizza shop would buy. Grocery stores probably don't have a SKU for those. Could be a different packaging factory entirely.

A local restaurant has been offering a roll of TP per take out order. I thought it was a nice gesture but hadn’t considered that it reflects this shift in demand from businesses to homes.

Yeah, I'm guessing that while it's for marketing value, they're not buying that TP - the source is their own stock which they can't use now that the venue itself is closed.

In Australia here too.

Supermarkets have introduced limits on the number of toilet roll packets you can buy (which is sensible).

However, last weekend I was at the supermarket when it opened, and I observed something I haven't seen noted elsewhere.

Manufactures seem only to be shipping enormous packages of toilet paper (24 packs). This means people buy 1 packet of 24 rolls, because that is all that is available. These huge packets also take more shelf space, which results in more shortages.

Some smaller, independent supermarkets have taken to re-packaging the rolls into smaller packets, which is a win/win for both the shop and the consumer.

But the manufacturer behaviour is interesting and unfortunate.

There's another side to this. I've seen footage of this on the news. People will buy their per customer limits, throw it into their cars and queue up again. Rinse and repeat. The footage I saw of this was toilet paper. Some people.

Costco does similar limitz I wish they used member id as the limit, not the checkout Id...

I think most people are happy to buy a 24 pack at the moment (and would probably buy multiples of smaller packs otherwise), and it's probably easier to distribute only 24-packs than a mix of sizes. I'm all for manufacturers prioritising throughput over convenience for the duration of the crisis.

Except that means that less households get supply, which forces them into more extreme measures.

People are happy to buy anything at the moment. Making sure each household can get supply seems like it should be a priority.

You're assuming people don't split with friends downstream.

Not really.

I think that happens, but from observation it's a downstream event usually in reaction to shortages one of the friends is having.

Manufacturing output is already at 100%. They don't have much more capacity to add and TP is already cheap and fast to produce.

What they're doing is shifting production to focus on large bulk sizes and more TP instead of other paper items.

We were lucky to have bought a 6-pack of triple-length rolls of TP right before the drought hit, but it's been a few weeks not and every time I've been to the shop the TP shelves have been bare.

A checkout girl told me they restock overnight and every day it's gone within two hours of opening (although that was before they brought in the dedicated AM shopping hour for the seniors/disabled to get their supplies).

Great point — also this season is the nadir of retailing. Everyone is broke from Christmas until March/April and companies shit their lines down to start making new product.

>shit their lines down

I'm not sure if that was meant to be a deliberate pun or just a fortuitous typo, but it fits here.

No it doesn't

Definitely a typo. My apologies.

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